


Sweet Revenge

by hoperise



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Isolation, Manipulation, Mystery, shameless whump, the darkest timeline
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-07
Updated: 2017-02-21
Packaged: 2018-09-22 15:09:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9613223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoperise/pseuds/hoperise
Summary: When Geoffrey Hoytsman was after him, Jake gave Rosa and Amy a list of 78 people who might want to hurt him. It should have been 79.[Goes AU after the end of Season Two]





	1. She'll Eat You Alive

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to whyamisoemotional for early edits on this fic.
> 
> Chapter Soundtrack:
> 
> Eat You Alive - The Oh Hellos  
> Am I Wrong - Nico & Vinz  
> Smoke Filled Lungs - BASECAMP

Hindsight, Jake mused, was bittersweet.

Understanding the steps that had taken you to rock bottom was a wonderful and terrible thing, as knowing how you got there didn't solve the problem.

It was even worse when you figured out the source of your torment in a flash of detective insight, yet were unable to communicate it because you were careening helplessly for the bullpen floor.

Bittersweet, like the acrid tang that burned at the back of his throat and glued his tongue to the roof of his mouth. Bittersweet, like being surrounded by New York's finest, his friends, and powerless to tell them what was wrong.

His vision grayed out before he hit the ground.

* * *

The first time Jake saw her, she wore a deep pink flower behind her ear. The richness of the color stood out vividly against her dark chestnut hair, catching his attention from across the bar. Her messy bun seemed familiar, so Jake walked up to her and tapped her on the shoulder. Her lacy cerise dress swirled about her knees as she turned - and a woman who definitely wasn't Amy looked up at him.

Her face was so familiar. Her nose was a bit too curved, her jaw too square to be Amy, but she smiled easily and she wasn't put off by his sudden approach.

"Sorry, I mistook you for my partner." Jake said, retreating a bit.

It was Friday night and Shaw's was crowded, bodies jostling about between tables. Perhaps it was the angle of her eyebrow, but she had the look of someone waiting to be impressed - or waiting for a punchline. She pressed a hand to her ear, so Jake leaned in and repeated himself.

"Is that what you say to all the girls?" Not-Amy said, taking a sip from a beer that twinned his own. Eyes like mahogany bathed in the glow of a warm fire swept up and down over his figure and she offered a teasing smile.

He laughed. "I meant my work partner, not my partner-partner. Though, now that you mention it, I should totally use that." Jake replied, stepping closer to be heard over the buzz of activity. "I'm Jake."

She reached out her hand and shook his own with a surprisingly firm grip. "Vanessa. What line of work are you in, Jake?"

A foxy lady giving him an open door to tell gruesome cop stories? Six months ago, Jake would’ve thought he’d hit the jackpot.

His thoughts flitted to Amy and her solemn affirmation that nothing could change between them until they'd sorted out this insanity with Holt’s replacement, Captain Vulture - Captain Pembroke, rather. Still, it had been two months since their awkward post-evidence-locker wrap up, two months since Dozerman died, and nothing had shifted. They were stuck in limbo while their new new captain raged over his promotion to ‘backwater’ Brooklyn and attempted to remake the Nine Nine in his own vision.

The stool next to Vanessa opened up, its occupant unhappy that Jake had kept sidling closer. Jake looked at Vanessa, charming Vanessa with the flower in her hair, and decided that one conversation wouldn't hurt anybody. He claimed the spot next to her and gave her a patented Peralta Ladykiller smile. "Well, let me buy you a drink and I'll tell you all about it."

Vanessa was the perfect audience. She oohed and ahhed at his cop stories, asking intelligent questions along the way. She said that she managed a boutique in Williamsburg - the kind of international outpost that constantly had incense burning, the kind that gave Jake a headache. She'd always wanted to travel the world, but had never left the state, so she lived vicariously through her customers and the stone-carved zebra knickknacks they bought.

Vanessa shared his passion for procedural dramas and eighties films. Her first celebrity crush had been Judd Nelson, which Jake definitely understood, but her fatal flaw was that she'd never seen any of the Die Hard movies. He made outraged sounds over the noise of the bar and said that they would have to remedy that.

She agreed.

Jake walked out of Shaw's with Vanessa's number and a vague agreement to meet up to watch Die Hard next week. The downside was that the nachos they'd shared gave him the worst case of food poisoning he'd had since he'd stopped playing 'How Fuzzy is Too Fuzzy?' with his fridge. He'd spent a distinctly miserable weekend sweating and moaning over the toilet.

On Monday morning, he peeled off damp sheets and rolled out of bed. Fatigue glued his eyelids together and turned his limbs to lead. He forced them into motion regardless; he couldn't afford to be late. Pembroke was hunting for opportunities to crucify him. Jake put an extra scoop of grounds into his coffeemaker and slogged into the shower, hoping to find his clarity in the clouds of steam.

No such luck.

Jake grabbed an extra large travel mug and loaded his coffee with cream and sugar. Before he forgot, he texted Vanessa on the way out the door. If bad nachos had pinned him to the bathroom for days, it would have wreaked havoc on her lighter frame.

 _contact. vanessa_  
_sent: 7:40 am_  
_hey its jake. had a great time friday, tho im p sure i got food poisoning from the nachos. hope ur ok_

She replied by the time he entered the precinct.

 _contact. vanessa_  
_rcvd: 8:07 am_  
_Omg it was brutal. never again._

 _contact. vanessa_  
_rcvd: 8:10 am_  
_better not happen the next place we go._

He smiled down at the touch screen. He settled in for the work day with the promise of a future date. If it took him two more cups of coffee to reach his usual perkiness, if he was a bit more pale than usual, no one mentioned it in the chaos of a redball that broke as the morning began.

* * *

The heavy bassline and distorted electric riff of his ringtone pulled him back into consciousness.

_'I'm too hot - hot damn. Called a police and a fireman. I'm too hot - hot damn. Make a dragon wanna retire, man.'_

Jake's hand spider-walked across the coffee table searching for his phone, knocking two mugs and an empty microwave popcorn bag onto the floor as he went. Sliding his thumb across the screen and moving to sit up, Jake whacked his head on the underside of the coffee table and groaned. "What?"

Amy’s voice resounded in his ear. "Jake, where are you?"

"What are you talking about?" He replied, his voice scratchy.

"You're supposed to be presenting the next phase of your raid on the One Niners with Boyle! Pembroke is grilling him and he's losing it. Get down here!" Her tone was hushed, but still conveyed the urgency.

He pulled his phone back from his face. The screen read 9:40 am. Jake cringed, the bottom dropping out of his stomach. "You're kidding me." Scrambling to his feet, Jake launched himself forwards. The floor beneath him tilted abruptly to the left. Jake staggered to the side, his arm flailing for purchase and knocking into an end table, sending a lamp crashing to the ground. "Damn it!"

Muffled noises from the phone, which hung loosely in his free arm.

"What's going on over there?" Amy demanded.

"Nothing. Umm, I'll be there in fifteen minutes." Jake said, looking reflexively at his forearm. It wasn't bleeding, though it ached from his wrist down through his elbow. Shards of porcelain and light bulb fragments turned his floor into a minefield.

She made a noise between a groan and a sigh. "You’d better make it ten."

Jake mumbled something affirmative and hung up. He blew out a tightly controlled breath, pushing his good hand into his hairline. Well, he'd have to deal with this shitstorm later.

Picking his way around the pieces of glass in his socks, Jake threw on a flannel shirt from the top of his laundry pile and tucked deodorant and a tie into the pockets of his leather jacket. He chewed some minty gum in the car and hastily arranged his hair in the rearview mirror, trying to make it look like he hadn't spent the night sleeping on the floor. This effort was hindered when he realized that the shirt he’d chosen had a suspicious stain that smelled like a brewery.

Breaking every traffic law in the books making his way to the precinct, Jake did his best to slip into the briefing unobtrusively - but, of course, his luck was not heading that direction.

"Nice of you to show up today, Peralta." Captain Vulture said, one foot resting on a chair in a pose that had to be super uncomfortable.

Jake cringed. He leaned against the doorway, his bruised arm clutching a large water bottle against his stomach. "Sorry I’m late, it’s been kind of a crazy morning."

"No sweat, Peralta. I was just explaining to the squad that you'd volunteered to finish the audit of the records room for Detective Daniels this weekend." Pembroke said. He slid his foot off the chair, lifting his chin and folding his arms over his chest.

"What? Boyle and I are supposed to work the One Niner case together! See, we've already got our backstories figured out-" Jake protested, squinting against the lingering vertigo and taking wobbly steps into the room.

Pembroke’s lip curled into a sneer. "I decided that Scully would be better suited for that case. He is multi-talented in that he can show up to work both on time and not hungover."

At their customary back table, Scully grinned and glanced at his hands modestly, while Hitchcock gave Jake the gimlet eye in what he could only assume was an attempt at intimidation. Really, Hitchcock looked like he was channeling Ernst Stavro Blofeld from _You Only Live Twice_. All he needed was a white cat to stroke.

"I'm not hungover." Jake said, taking a seat next to Boyle and crossing his arms defensively. “It just so happens that I’m wearing a shirt with a beer stain on it, which doesn’t sound a lot better but is absolutely the truth!”

"Well? Were you drinking last night or what?" Terry asked, exasperated.

Jake hesitated. Vanessa had come over to watch the third Die Hard movie and brought a plate of baklava. They might have shared a glass of wine or two, and after a certain point in the evening his memories got hazy. He didn’t remember Vanessa leaving or falling asleep, yet both events had clearly happened (and he’d rather be exiled to the records room for a month than talk about the girl he was sort of dating in front of Amy). This didn’t feel like any hangover he’d had before, though. This felt like… dizzy-confusion-surprise unconsciousness, and there weren’t any good words for that.

"Thanks a lot, Jake." Hitchcock said, glowering from his seat.

Jake's protest died on his lips. He'd love to explain himself, but he really had no excuse. He sighed. “Don’t worry. It won’t happen again.”

Boyle’s forehead puckered, his head drooping slightly. He wouldn’t meet Jake’s eyes.

* * *

A hand slammed down next to the spot where his head lay on the desk. His whole body jerked and Jake sucked in a deep breath.

"Jake!" Terry snapped, his eyebrows drawn together in fury. "Two o'clock is nap time for my babies, not work babies! Pembroke’s riding my ass to get these reports in."

"Right." Jake replied, scrubbing his face and trying to figure out if it was the bullpen or his head that was spinning. "Sorry, Sarge."

"Get it together, man." Terry said, setting his jaw and heading back to his own desk.

He pinched the bridge of his nose, kicking himself internally. Not again. Ugh, why did this keep happening?

Jake couldn't blame the Sarge for being harsh. The Nine Nine had a string of high-profile cases that had the media scrutinizing their every action. Everyone was feeling the strain, even their bloodthirsty scavenger of a captain.

Someone up at One Police Plaza really had it in for either Pembroke or the Nine Nine. Technically the Vulture had been promoted, but he was acting as though he’d been exiled and was attempting to use the squad’s reputation as a battering ram to force his way back into Major Crimes.

Jake was big enough to admit that Pembroke was a talented leader- in three short months, he’d managed to turn a job he loved into one he dreaded. Some clever documentation on Amy’s part and the threat of a harassment lawsuit from every female officer in the precinct had curbed the worst of his excesses. Terry tried to absorb and deflect what he could, but much of his time was taken up with Ava. That left Jake as the Vulture’s favorite punching bag.

On top of that, bouncing back from that awful food poisoning was harder than he'd thought.

To be fair, Jake hadn't been giving himself a lot of time to rest up. He’d given up on winning Pembroke over, trying instead to stay out of trouble and keep his head above the rising tide of casework. He'd been putting in a lot of overtime trying to catch up on his backlog of cases, and those late nights were coming back to haunt him now. This was the fourth time that he'd woken up somewhere in the precinct, dizzy and nauseous, with no memory of falling asleep in the first place.

His coworkers were initially sympathetic, though he could tell that they were starting to tire of the routine. A low grade of panic burbled in his stomach. His numbers were down; he needed a big win to shake off these past couple of weeks.

Compared to the mounting stress at work, being with Vanessa was easy. She was low-maintenance, fun, and demanded nothing of him. Jake told her that he was still working through the end of complicated relationship. She gave him a thin, understanding smile and said that she'd just been through a messy break up herself, so she was fine with taking it one day at a time. They didn't have a label. They didn’t want a label. They just were.

Cooking seemed to be Vanessa’s method of coping with frustrating retail moments. She was always coming over to test out a new recipe on him, which he appreciated after a long day of covering his own ass. After dinner, they'd watch an eighties movie or an episode of The A-Team and she'd put on a pot of rooibos tea. Jake generally wasn't a tea person, but a few teaspoons of the dark red honey that Vanessa brought over helped to mask the flavour. He fell asleep to the flicker of the television with a dark head pressed against his shoulder.

This was comfortable. He could do this.

It wasn't exactly what (or who) he wanted, but Jake had spent so much time pining for Amy, only to be shut down at every turn. Chasing her was exhausting. He didn't have energy for that these days.

Besides, Vanessa was nice enough - maybe his problem was that he was never satisfied with the good things right in front of him, that he spent all his time chasing fantasies instead of attainable realities. Maybe he was making this Amy thing out to be a bigger deal than it actually was - in all likelihood, she could've gotten over him weeks ago. Moving on was the right thing to do. Right?

Regardless, Jake didn't mention Vanessa around the precinct. He didn't want to rub his relationship in Amy’s face; Jake was a lot of things, but he wasn't inconsiderate.

* * *

"Sarge thinks I'm slacking off. The Vulture thinks I'm doing this to spite him. It's just so- frustrating that they don't get it. I _am_ trying." Jake vented, slouching back into the couch.

If he was vexed by them, he was infuriated by himself. Jake could see his friends losing respect for him. He kept trying to work harder, push farther, but his stupid body wouldn’t let him do that. It was like trying to crawl out of quicksand - every inch of progress gained meant another lost. Why couldn't they see that it wasn’t his fault?

Vanessa rubbed soothing circles into his shoulder. "I know you are. It sucks that your boss doesn't care about those things."

Pulling back, Jake frowned. "Terry's my friend. He cares, I know he does. It's just that- he's under a lot of pressure. The captain’s cracking down pretty hard with our caseload."

Amber eyes widened and Vanessa ducked her head. "I'm sorry, I'm just worried about you. I can't help it if I want to take your side."

Warmth spread through his chest. There were so few people in his life that cared about him enough to worry. Jake couldn't help cracking a smile, sliding his arm around her shoulders and drawing her closer.

Pressing her ear against his chest so that her voice echoed in his rib cage, Vanessa told him stories about growing up with her sister, Bea. They fought like wild animals, but they always had each other's backs when it mattered.

The next morning Jake slept through his alarm again and received an official written warning for tardiness. He crumpled it up and tossed it in the garbage, his stomach souring. So much for his friends having his back.

* * *

Every now and then, Jake woke up in the middle of the night. She never pressed, but he told her one night about this long undercover assignment he had about a year and a half ago.

She asked what he remembered most.

Silence reigned for a minute. He thought of red, red, red.

Instead, he told her that it felt like purgatory. He was always waiting for something. He’d lived in dread of going to a dark place, constantly longing to be set free to rejoin his family.

Her breathing slowed. He thought she might be asleep when he added that he wasn’t sure he’d ever left that purgatory.

She wasn’t sleeping.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first three chapters were written hastily before the season three premiere as part of rampant speculation over who the new captain would be. Imagine my delight (and triumphant yelling audible all through my friend's dorm) when I saw the reveal of the Vulture as the early canon captain in Season Three.
> 
> Then life happened at me, eighteen months passed, and I found myself with an abundance of time and the desire to complete things. The ending is written for this fic, but your comments fuel my soul and quicken the polishing process.
> 
> I also didn't want to tag this as containing an original female character, for reasons that will become evident. Feel free to speculate.
> 
> Also, Jake's ringtone was more topical a year and a half ago when this was first written, but I didn't update it for sake of relevance. Just imagine that this takes place back when Uptown Funk was starting to become overplayed, and everyone in the bullpen groans whenever they hear Jake's phone go off.


	2. Do I Make You Cringe?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made you some heartbreak for Valentine's Day. #sorrynotsorry
> 
> Cringe - Matt Maeson  
> Rubik’s Cube - Athlete  
> Defeated - Bad Suns

 "So, it's settled." Isidro said, flashing Rosa a smile with impossibly white teeth. He shut the briefcase of counterfeit bills and fastened the clasps. "I'll have your order by the end of the week." 

Rosa allowed herself a small, triumphant grin, leaning against the hood of her cover sedan. They had him now. Time to call in her backup and wrap this up. "Perfect. We should celebrate."

The counterfeiter's eyebrows rose, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning in. "Absolutely. You got someplace in mind?"

She shrugged her shoulders and shifted her weight to one side, glancing across the vacant parking lot to the alley beyond Isidro's partner, Alex. "Oh, you know. Wherever you like."

Isidro had one of those stupid little manicured beards that he stroked when he was thinking. Rosa wanted to punch it.

He rubbed his chin. "I know a guy who runs a craft beer bar in Greenpoint."

That sounded awful. "That sounds wonderful!" Rosa let out an enthusiastic giggle, the kind she knew creeped Jake out. Maybe that would get his attention. She made sure to enunciate in case her code word had been garbled by the wire. "What a great way to _celebrate_."

Alex checked his phone. "Hey, boss, it hasn't come through yet."

"Transfer's probably lagging. I can never get signal in this neighborhood." Rosa said, rolling her eyes and releasing a put-upon sigh. Out of the corner of her eye, she glanced down the alley again. Her earpiece was silent. Where was Jake?

Frowning, Isidro's hands moved to rest on his hips. He turned to look at Alex's phone, his earlier cheerfulness thinning. "You're not trying to play me, are you, sweetheart?" One hand inched towards the small of his back.

That was it.

Seasoned reflexes went for her sidearm. Rosa straightened up, her voice regaining its commanding tone. "NYPD, freeze! Put the weapon down and your hands in the air."

Alex's hands flew up, the phone still clutched in his hand.

Isidro slowly drew his gun, keeping one hand up as he bent over to drop the weapon. He hesitated. "You think you can take us both, kitten?"

"I've got backup right around the corner, but yeah, I could take you." Rosa said, her nostrils flaring at the pet name. Man, this guy was asking for it. "Get on your knees."

A tense beat passed.

Nothing but silence over her earpiece. Her lip curled into a snarl and she channeled the bubbling rage into her gaze.

The phone clattered to the concrete. Alex didn't appear to be made of sturdy stuff; he melted under Rosa's stare, falling to his knees and locking his fingers behind his head.

Isidro had other ideas. He raised the gun and fired.

The driver's side window shattered next to her. Rosa ducked out of the way of flying glass, landing heavily on her shoulder. She returned fire, catching Isidro in the hand.

He bellowed and dropped his weapon, clutching his hand to his chest.

In the confusion, Alex scrambled to his feet and took off running.

Rosa let out a low growl. Where was her damn backup? She grabbed Isidro's non-bleeding wrist and yanked him over to the car, cuffing him to the steering wheel.

Reaching below her collar, she grabbed the microphone and held it next to her lips, taking a deep breath before shouting, " _Peralta!_  Move your ass, Alex is coming your way!"

She sprinted across the parking lot, her boots slapping the pavement. Alex made a sharp turn at the end of the alley, disappearing onto the open street. She set her jaw and turned after him, arms pumping at her sides.

Alex picked the wrong direction to flee in. He ran towards Jake's squad car- and... past it?

Only then did the car door swing open. Jake clambered out, his hair ruffled and red pressure marks on his face.

No time for that. Rosa blasted past Jake, shoulder-checking him against his door. She braced her arm and tackled Alex into the ground.

The counterfeiter groaned, the air leaving his chest in a mighty whoosh. "I think you broke something."

"Shouldn't've made me chase you." She panted, forcing his wrists together.

Footsteps rushed up behind her. "Rosa, I'm so sorry-"

"Save it, Peralta. Give me your cuffs." Rosa demanded, holding a hand up expectantly. She wasn't ready to look at him yet.

Wordlessly, Jake set the heavy metal in her palm.

She cuffed Alex and stood up, her legs screaming from built-up lactic acid. Pulling the perp to his feet, Rosa walked him over to Jake's car and pushed him into the backseat, reciting his Miranda rights as she went.

Jake's voice was high, his words stumbling over each other as he stammered out dumb excuses. "Rosa, I mean it- I don't know what happened, I-" 

"Save it." She repeated, grabbing a fistful of his jacket without breaking her stride, dragging Jake out of eager earshot of the criminal in his backseat. Notably, Jake was easier to move than either of the counterfeiters, though he stumbled a couple of times along the way. Halfway to the parking lot, Rosa pushed Jake into the wall.

"What the hell, Jake? You just about got me shot two minutes ago 'cause you were sleeping on the job, and you think an apology's going to fix that?" She snapped, her voice low.

Jake's eyes were wide, his pupils large in the dim light. Red fabric marks stood out clearly against his pale cheek. His mouth worked, but no sound came out.

"I don't care if you're slacking at the precinct. Out here, I expect you to have my back." Rosa narrowed her eyes.

Jake cringed. "I know, I know, I'm s-" He started to apologize once more, but thought better of it. Good. “It won't happen again, I promise."

Her nostrils flared. "Better not, because I'm done covering for you. Today stays between us. Next time, the captain's gonna hear about it, and he'll bump your sorry ass back to traffic cop so fast it'll make your head spin. Are we clear?"

He ducked his head, his shoulders sinking. "Crystal." Jake replied, his voice nearly a whisper.

"Good." Rosa leaned back, setting her jaw. She swept her eyes up and down, taking in details from Jake's rumpled clothing to the bags under his eyes. "I don't care what this is, but you'd better get your shit together before somebody gets hurt."

Jake stilled. It was a moment before he lifted his head. When it rose, his expression was as stony as Holt's had ever been. Jake set his jaw and nodded.

He had the nerve to be offended with her for his mistake? Anger curled Rosa's lip into a sneer. Slowly she released her grip on his jacket, a dark promise in her eyes. “Okay. Let’s go get the other guy before he bleeds all over the upholstery.”

* * *

Vanessa was spending a lot of time at his place, as the incense in her apartment gave him a pounding headache. Those mornings when he had to drag himself out of bed inch by inch, she sent him out the door with a hot, sweet cup of coffee and a couple of biscuits slathered in honey. Although eating first thing after he woke up made him nauseous, Vanessa insisted he take something with him to keep his energy up.

He teased her about how couple-y they were being. She smacked him on the arm and called him a dork.

Jake's endless supply of cover identities had taken on a theme. On the last sting that Charles and he had pulled, he'd gone as Gerald, the guy who's always sick (Gerald’s theme song went on for two and a half minutes, repeating ‘it’s Gerald: he’s always sick’ in varying tones). It was the easiest persona he'd ever adopted - all he had to do was act as cranky and miserable as he actually felt.

When the perp was cuffed in the back of their car, Charles praised him for his convincing performance, but Jake had been seriously worried that he was about to throw up on the guy's shoes. Then the squad car would've smelled like vomit for the rest of the week and just thinking about it made him queasy all over again.

He was filing evidence away in lock-up when it became clear that there was more than just exhaustion at play. After a couple of minutes squatting down by a filing cabinet, Jake stood up to reach the rest of his envelopes. Coloured dots exploded behind his eyes and he slumped over behind the cabinet, his vision swallowed by black.

He woke to a gentle hand on his shoulder.

"Come on, Jake. Enough of this." Amy said, exasperated.

Mumbling something in response, Jake fumbled to get his hands underneath him.

Amy crouched next to him, her tone void even of frustration. "If you're that tired, just take a sick day."

Trying not to think about how many cobwebs were in his hair, Jake pushed off the ground. Blood rushed from his head and the room spun for a second. He slipped from his hand down onto his elbow, grunting slightly.

"Jake?" Her mouth thinned into a line and a crease formed in her brow.

Hey, there was the worried Santiago he knew and loved (or whatever. Shut up.)

He blinked heavily a few times, letting out a slow breath. "Whoa. Head rush."

He couldn’t lie to himself anymore. Jake hadn't accidentally fallen asleep - he'd blacked out in a corner for who knew how long. There was a decent list of physical ailments that Jake could write off as unimportant -minor things like toothaches, headaches, vomiting, sprained ankles, hairline fractures, and broken ribs- but blackouts were, admittedly, hard to ignore.

She fretted for a moment before offering a hand, which Jake took to pull himself up. (And by the way, he could totally stand up on his own, but when was the last time they'd shared a simple touch without it being super awkward?)

"You've got to take better care of yourself, Jake. You can't run yourself into the ground like this." Amy said, her lecturing voice at half-strength.

The squad’s continued obliviousness was salt in the festering wound of dealing with an undiagnosed illness. It stung that Amy didn't recognize his struggle, even more so that she resented him for it. Half of Jake wanted to explain, but the other half vindictively wanted her to figure it out.

Vanessa was right. If Amy really cared, she'd be paying attention.

Jake let out a noisy sigh, his head lolling back. "I'm doing the best I can."

* * *

Amy pressed a finger to the intercom. "Jake, let me up. I want to talk about what happened today." She eyed the chicken-scratch handwriting on the tab listing his apartment number, fidgeting in the entryway to his building until the mechanism buzzed and unlocked itself.

Okay, so maybe she hadn't been the best partner recently. She'd been the primary on the last redball and she'd chosen Boyle as her secondary. High-profile cases demanded extra hours and his attention to detail, and she wasn't comfortable spending that much time alone with Jake - not since Holt's last day and their awkward conversation afterward.

Nevertheless, she was his partner, and something was up with him. Jake had been pulling a lot of overtime, but his numbers were still down. She wondered when he had time to sleep.

Captain Pembroke’s latest strategy for reforming the precinct was assigning random overnight shifts to the detective with the lowest numbers each week to incentivize productivity. She understood it in theory, but in practice it introduced an unhealthy us-or-them mentality to their tight-knit squad. Plus, all those late shifts on top of his overtime meant that she barely saw Jake these days. They didn't hang out anymore and maybe she... missed him. Just a little bit.

Like a captive with Stockholm Syndrome missed their favorite jailer, obviously.

Amy assured herself that she just wanted to make sure that he was alright. She knocked on his door.

An attractive brunette pulled it open, dressed only in a familiar red flannel shirt and her underwear. She had that seemingly effortless grungey-chic style that Amy had given up on achieving. Her thick hair was pulled into a messy side braid and she had barely a dusting of makeup on, yet somehow she still looked more put together than Amy felt in her professional gray pantsuit. "Can I help you?" She asked, stretching her arms above her head.

"I'm, um, looking for Jake?" Amy said, her question ending in a high-pitched squeak. She hopse desperately that she had the wrong apartment, that Jake had moved and hadn't told her. 

The woman smiled prettily and gestured behind her. "Sorry, he crashed pretty hard. Didn't get a lot of sleep last night - my fault." She laughed and folded her arms over her chest. "Who are you?"

"Amy. His partner." Amy said. Her concern curdled into frustration. "Who're you?"

She leaned against the doorpost, raising her eyebrows. "Vanessa. His girlfriend."

Oh.

_Oh._

That's what this was all about - Jake's late nights with some girl she'd never heard about? Swallowing her distress and forcing her expression into a too-bright smile, Amy stammered, "O-Okay, well, I was just worried because he seemed so off at work today, but, um, I guess I'll just see him tomorrow."

Vanessa mirrored her smile, mint-green manicured nails resting against the door frame. She arched her back in a yawn, Jake’s shirt riding up to expose a strip of tanned stomach.“Don’t worry, I’ll take good care of him.”

* * *

"Jake. Jacob. J-Crew. Jakeasaurus." 

Jake, who had been trying for twenty minutes to concentrate enough to finish typing up a witness report on a B&E, let out a long sigh through his nose. "What do you need, Charles?"

"Closure, Jake. Why'd you do it?" Charles said, a note of existential angst in his voice.

Rolling his head over to glance at the detective, Jake was struck by Boyle's crestfallen expression. "What are you talking about?" He asked, his thought process too scattered to follow Boyle's rabbit trails. 

"I was rooting for you, Jake! Then you take poor Amy's heart and shatter it with some hipster floozy? How could you?" Charles hissed, clutching a folder to his chest that Jake dearly hoped wasn't his folder of best man speeches.

Absurdly, Jake's wavering attention drifted to his heart, which began to pound a staccato rhythm behind his sternum. He moved to rub his hand against his chest, feigning an adjustment to his knit tie. "I can't play twenty questions with you today, Charles."

"Amy told me about your secret girlfriend." Charles replied, rolling his chair closer and casting a mournful gaze through the break room window to Santiago. He rested an elbow on a precipitous stack of folders on Jake's desk. "You know, the one you've been spending all those late nights with these past few weeks-"

Something crashed to the floor behind them. Jake's head whipped around so fast the room spun.

Rosa stood with her fists clenched above the ruins of her monitor. "You've been- you mean-" She'd broken her pact to ignore Jake's existence in favour of a caustic glare that bore into his soul.

His heart fluttered again. Jake held Rosa's gaze, thinking of all the cases they'd worked together, all the times he'd had her six, and how none of that was reflected in her cold fury. "Rosa, you know that's not what happened." He said in a low voice, crossing his arms.

"It's Diaz to you." Rosa snarled, and something inside Jake shattered. 

"What the hell is going on here?" Rounding the corner into the bullpen, Terry surveyed the tense bullpen. He took in Rosa's fury and Jake's defensive posture, his shoulders sinking in resignation.

Ever at the ready, Charles piped up, "Jake has a new girlfriend and I was trying to remind him how he and Amy are destined to be together-"

Terry drew a sharp breath, his suspenders flexing under the additional strain. "So you don't have time to see your goddaughter, but you've got time for a girlfriend?"

There it was again, the label that he and Vanessa had never used to title their relationship.

Jake's eyebrows flew up, a strangled laugh escaping his mouth at the absurdity. "This is insane. This is actually what going insane feels like."

"You've got that right! You've got to be crazy to let Amy go, Jake - she's your soul mate!" Charles said, resting an elbow on a precipitous pile of casefiles stacked on the corner of Jake's desk.

He slapped a hand down on the arm of his chair. "Charles, stop. Amy and I are never going to happen, so just let it go. You're making it worse."

"He's right, Charles."

Amy's voice, from behind him.

The blood drained from Jake's face. For a dizzying second, he thought he might actually pass out.

Her expression was impassive, but she wouldn't make eye contact as she moved to take her seat. "We let our personal relationship get in the way of our partnership, and that's not going to happen anymore."

Jake pushed his chair back from his desk and stood on shaky legs, trying to ignore the sense that the bottom had fallen out of his stomach. "Right." He said, voice hoarse.

There were too many eyes on him, too much disappointment pointed in his direction. He needed to get some air. Jake turned to leave, though he didn't miss the soft shushing sound of Charles' best man folder sliding into the trash can.

* * *

Jake frowned into the mirror, prodding a goose egg by his hairline from where he'd blacked out and fallen on his face. 

"I should go to the hospital." He said, like he was announcing his own execution. He looked paler than he remembered and unexplained blackouts were never a good sign. He didn't own a scale, but he was pretty sure he'd lost some of his charming fluffy padding.

A thin pair of arms slid around his waist. He watched Vanessa's reflection reach up to kiss him on the jaw. "Good idea. The NYPD gives you health insurance, right?"

He pressed his lips together and sighed. "Yeah, but I kind of maxed out my coverage earlier this year." As it turned out, getting hit by a car and breaking his everything was really expensive.

"Well, I'm sure it won't be that bad. Maybe a couple thousand dollars. Your savings should cover it - it's not like one hospital visit's gonna bankrupt you." She said. Her voice was soft and encouraging, her words anything but.

That brushed close to the hot anxiety-stove in his mind that he did his best to avoid. His stomach clenching, Jake broke eye contact with his reflection and looked down. "That's the thing - I don't have ‘savings’ so much as ‘crushing debt.’"

Vanessa hummed, but her grip didn't ease up. "What about your friends? Would they front you cash for the co-pay?" 

He let out a bitter laugh, his shoulders falling. “Not likely.” That well had dried up a long time ago; any latent goodwill had disappeared after the news broke that he was dating Vanessa and had supposedly left Amy in the lurch. Rosa hadn’t called him by his name in two weeks. He'd had a knock-down drag-out with Gina over how he'd changed since she left the precinct. He was out of favours and out of options.

It was a weird feeling, not having a safety net in his friends or his bosses. Amy had been right again. Trying to change their relationship had ruined everything. He wondered which was worse: knowing that nobody had his back, or knowing that it was his fault.

Vanessa took a halting half-breath, like she was about to say something, and stopped.

He squeezed her hand. “What is it?”

“I just wanted to say that I’m here for you. Even if your friends have given up. Even if the doctor finds something. Even if you can’t be a cop anymore and the captain fires you. I’ll be here, don’t worry.” She said.

Her words pressed a firebrand against his unspoken fears. Tight bands squeezed against his lungs and Jake very suddenly needed some space. He pulled away, headed for the balcony. "I'll wait 'till the new year, I guess."

* * *

He confessed to her under the seal of darkness. He wondered if there was something wrong with him, something that made everyone walk out on him. He told her about Geoffrey Hoytsman and _this is why everyone hates you_ , about his dad’s goodbye letter. Had his dad recognized that something at an early age and gotten out just in time?

She pressed his head against her neck and shushed him. Said there wasn’t anything wrong with him. Said it was always them, always their fault. Said that sometimes you had to cut toxic relationships out of your life. Some things weren't worth fighting for.

Jake wondered why he was one of those things.

He buried his fingers in her hair, his touch-starved heart longing to feel anything but loneliness.

* * *

Today was the day Jake was 98 percent sure he was getting suspended. If not fired.

There was no getting around it: he'd screwed up big time. Jake mislabeled some evidence in Rosa’s counterfeiting case, and the defense attorney used his mistake to get the case thrown out on a technicality. He couldn't even defend his actions; all he remembered of that night was a blinding headache and a cab taking him home at two in the morning.

More than anything, Jake wanted to cover his face with a pillow and hide for about a month, but his integrity demanded that he own up to his mistake. Last night he told Vanessa that he was coming clean. About his sickness and everything else he'd kept quiet. If Pembroke put him on medical leave, fine. He'd take the time to get better so this never happened again.

Vanessa made him a strong cup of tea to fortify him for the meeting and gave him a kiss goodbye as he headed out the door.

Settling into his desk, Jake took a long sip of tea to distract himself. It wasn't the lemon tea she'd started giving him when he'd finally admitted he was sick. This taste was more floral, strong like black tea, but with a sharp aftertaste. He grimaced and swallowed anyways, hoping the hot drink would soothe his acid-worn throat and the caffeine would let him power through the briefing.

Amy sat down at her desk across from him. She hadn't quite met his eyes since the day she stopped by when he was sleeping. She was pulling her files together, getting ready to update the squad on her double homicide.

Guilt flooded his mouth, tingling on his lips. There was a foul taste on his tongue, like battery acid and bile. He fought to string words together to start a conversation with her, but his mind was blank.

Then, Jake slowly came to the realization that his throat was actually burning. His hands moved sluggishly to pick up his travel mug, lifting it to his nose. The scent was powerful - something flowery and overwhelmingly sweet, just the way he liked it.

A blow of understanding struck him in the chest, stealing the breath from his lungs. For weeks now, Vanessa had access to what he ate, what he drank, where he slept. She'd been drugging him since the first night they met, and he knew just how she was doing it.

The mug slipped from his hands onto his desk, slopping only a bit over the side. Jake pushed himself to his feet. His heart pounded, his hearing fuzzing in and out. He opened his mouth. Tried to force out an explanation, but his tongue wasn't working right. The only coherent sounds he could form were the two syllables in Amy's name.

His vision narrowed to focus on the poisoned tea. Something was happening, something he didn't quite understand. There was a bizarre sensation in his stomach, like he was strapped into a roller coaster, climbing to the top of the first hill.

Amy's concerned face slid into view. Her mouth moved, but the sound was nonsense to his brain.

Then, his stomach reached the crest of the hill and plunged down the other side. His world tilted sharply to the right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to draw attention to the fact that Jake compares Vanessa to Amy and sees Amy's strengths. Amy compares Vanessa to herself and sees her own flaws.
> 
> Also, Gerald, the guy who's always sick, comes from an SNL character Andy Samberg made up that never made it onto the show, as mentioned in a spectacular interview with Seth Meyers that was apparently taken off Youtube.


	3. The Colour of Boom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Soundtrack:  
> Sorry - Meg Meyers  
> Polaroid - Imagine Dragons  
> Hello My Old Heart - The Oh Hellos

Like any mature adult, Amy had been doing her best to avoid Jake. He was constantly coming into work exhausted or hungover. She got that he was having a good time behind her back, but did he have to be so obvious about it?

This morning, it looked like Jake hadn't slept at all the night before. He was restless, staring at his desk and passing his travel mug from hand to hand before taking a huge swig from it.

Amy tried to ignore him. Jake was a grown man; he could take care of himself. Besides, he had Vanessa to comfort him when things got rough. She reviewed her notes for the briefing, trying not to think of her coulda-shoulda-wouldas.

Jake dropped the mug on his desk.

She jumped at the sudden noise, but didn't look up.

Then, he called her name. "Amy."

"Amy." He repeated, his tone more insistent.

"What?" Amy replied, gathering the last of her files.

"Amy." Jake said.

She looked up this time.

His eyes were wide, locked on his desk. He was taking rapid, shallow breaths. She wondered for a second if he was having a panic attack. Half-expecting him to jump and scare her, Amy leaned into his line of sight. "Jake, are you feeling okay?"

His pupils dilated. "Amy." He said, his voice softening into something reverent, like a liturgy. Or perhaps a lament.

Then he went down, missing the sharp edge of his desk by a hair.

"Jake!" The panic in her tone caught the attention of the officers who had begun to congregate for the morning briefing. But if her voice hadn't claimed their focus, what happened next did.

Jake's eyes rolled back in his head, his back arching off the ground at a painful angle. The muscles in his chest clenched tight, causing his breath to come out in a strangled rattle.

Amy's breath caught in her throat . Shit. She knew what came next. Before her mind caught up, she was on her feet, kicking his chair and trash can back. She'd tugged his tie loose and was tearing off her jacket to bundle it under his head when he began to seize.

"Oh my God, Jake!" Boyle shouted, rushing forward.

Voices clamoured around her, too many to recognize. Too many alpha dogs in the room trying to take control. Sarge offered to hold him down. Scully offered to he'd grab a spoon so Jake wouldn't swallow his tongue.

"Everybody shut up and listen to me!" Amy demanded, using with the full force of the voice she used to direct the small mob that was her nieces and nephews.

She glanced at her watch. "Charles, write this down: 8:17:32. Scully, swallowing your tongue is physically impossible; put the spoon away. Sarge, don't touch him, you could break something trying to restrain him. If you want to help, move these desks out of the way. Rosa, get me an ambulance. Everybody else, move it along!"

Chaos ebbed in the wake of Amy's voice of command. If Jake -the old Jake- were conscious, he'd be sitting back against his desk with that soft, sort-of-impressed look on his face that told her he was proud of her.

But this Jake was the one who needed her help. She knelt down next to his thrashing form, placing herself between him and the sharp metal edges of his desk until Sarge moved it out of the way and she could retreat to a safe distance.

Though they all had received first aid training, it felt different to see her friend trembling and jerking, his limbs out of control. The rational part of Amy reminded herself that this was just electrical signals misfiring in his brain and he wouldn't remember anything. That rationality helped her to distance herself, to keep a cool head.

Jake's choking gasps were the loudest thing in the bullpen, though Rosa's snarling attempt to threaten an ambulance into coming faster was a close second.

At last he relaxed, the clenching muscle spasms fading into milder twitches. Then, he stilled.

Amy checked her watch again. "8:21:16. Boyle, write it down and tell me how long it lasted. The paramedics will need to know." Busy work was the best strategy for the most panicked person in the room.

"Three minutes, thirty-nine seconds." Boyle replied, his voice calmer now that he had something to take charge of.

Sitting back on her heels, Amy watched and waited for Jake to show signs of stirring. She knew it took some people a while to come around after a seizure, but she felt so jumpy - like her heart had seized as well upon seeing Jake hit the ground.

For the first time in the years she'd known him, he lay perfectly still. She allowed herself to look at him - really look at him - and to her surprise, she discovered that Jake's face was thinner than she remembered. Her efforts to avoid her partner had borne fruit, and what a bitter fruit it was.

It was another moment before Amy realized that his chest wasn't rising.

Her heart began to pound. She drew closer, tapping him on the shoulders, hard. "Jake? Jake, can you hear me?"

No response.

She pulled her ponytail to the side and leaned over his mouth, trying to feel the whisper of breath against her cheek or in her ear.

Nothing.

"He's not breathing." Amy warned. Her voice seemed disconnected from her body, unnaturally calm, like she was observing a random stranger. Still, it was Jake’s neck that she slid two fingers along, pressing into the cavity next to his carotid artery. Amy waited a full ten seconds, desperate to find a rhythm.

No such luck.

Her heart beat faster, as though to make up for his absent one. "Rosa, tell them I've got no pulse."

Absurdly, she was reminded of the last CPR refresher they'd been required to take. Back before everything had become so complicated. Jake had affectionately named their practice dummy Manny.  He’d tried to make her laugh by turning his rescue breathing into a make-out tutorial. She'd done her best to take it seriously - that is, until she'd accidentally taken Manny's head off with her elbow and sent it skittering across the room.

Nothing about this was funny.

In one swift motion, she ripped Jake's tie off. Amy tipped his head back and pinched his nose shut with one hand, using the other to lift his chin and open his airway.

'Just follow procedure, Santiago, you're good at this. It's easy as ABC.' A familiar voice sounded in her head. A - Open Airway. B - Check Breathing. C - Chest Compressions.

She sealed her mouth around his and gave two full breaths, checking out of the corner of her eye to make sure his chest was rising.

Amy sat up to start chest compressions, only to see the Sarge kneeling across from her. He folded one hand atop the other, already pumping in the center of Jake's chest. He counted loudly and deliberately, timing his compressions with practiced familiarity.

The Sarge finished his first set of thirty. His eyes made contact with hers. They weren't going to sit back and lose him.

She stopped counting how many complete sets of breaths and compressions they'd done after they hit fifteen. An eternity later, the paramedics arrived and took over. Boyle recited the specifics of the seizure and Jake's medical history (to impressive detail) like he was reporting to the captain.

Amy flopped onto her desk chair as they strapped Jake into a backboard. She tried to catch her breath, one hand floating to cover her mouth. Her lips felt bruised from pressing up against Jake's face, which was something she hadn't been able to say for a while.

Hold on. That wasn't bruising; that was distinct tingling.

She recalled the singular focus Jake had on his desk before he'd collapsed. She looked at the travel mug, and the puzzle pieces slid into place.

* * *

The room was quiet except for the soft beep-beep of a heart monitor.

His chest was a throbbing mass of pain. For a moment, he thought he was in Atlantic City, about to wake up surrounded by his friends, before Jake realized that was too much to ask for.

Jake let out a wheezing groan on his exhale. Well, he was alive. That thought wasn't especially encouraging - a vague sense of trepidation lingered at the edges of his consciousness. Why bother facing that when he could just slip back under?

A hand that was soft from an unimaginable amount of moisturizing closed around his wrist. "You with me, Jake?"

Talking required more effort than he had available at the moment. He hummed softly, eyes flickering under his eyelids.

"You big jerk. You scared me." Gina's voice filtered through layers of murkiness.

Jake tilted his head towards the source of her voice, his voice a raspy mutter. "M'srr."

She released a sigh that was equal parts distress and relief, tightening her grip on his wrist. "You sound like a recovering meth head. How many time did Nana tell us? Say no to drugs, Jake."

His lips twitched toward amusement before returning to a flat line.

Jake's eyes fluttered open. Gina swam into view. Her feet were kicked up on his bed, her nap blanket spread over both of their legs. She was giving him a disappointed stare, but her eyes were red and her mascara was smudged lightly, and that small flaw moved him perhaps a bit more than it should have.

"D'you know where you are?" She asked, her tone softening.

Jake blinked slowly and lifted his shoulders in something approximating a shrug, which tugged against a tight band of pain drawn across his chest.

Gina's mouth settled in a thin line. "New York Methodist. Somebody straight-up poisoned you. It's been, like, two days. You almost died, man."

He cleared his throat. Grimaced. Moistened his lips as he herded his errant thoughts into a coherent reply. "Sounds 'bout right."

"Terry's comin' over, he's got some questions for you. You up for that?"

For once, it sounded like she was open to someone else's opinion. Even blistering at him for bailing on her over a girl, he knew that she wouldn't hesitate to go up against the Sarge on his behalf.

His throat felt tight. Overwhelmed, Jake let his eyes slide shut. "Jus'... gimme a sec." He mumbled.

They sat in silence. Jake drifted in and out, stray Kwazy Cupcake sound effects floating to his ears every so often.

Voices swam into focus. "How's he doing?" 

"Little fuzzy still. Any way we can put this off, Terr-bear?" Gina replied, her voice quiet.

"We're two days behind. The perp could be halfway 'round the world by now, we need anything he can give us." Terry's voice became clearer as he drew close. 

Jake's nostrils flared. His nails scraped across rough cotton sheets, balling into loose fists. "I'll save you s'me trouble." He rasped, opening his eyes to stare holes in the ceiling. "'S Vanessa.. it w's always V'nessa."

Gina sucked in a breath beside him. "Seriously?"

He nodded, a muscle in his jaw working. He didn't dare look at Terry or Gina to see their reactions. Whether it was pity, outrage, or sick satisfaction, he couldn't take it right now. Jake couldn't rally his wandering thoughts enough to identify his emotional response just yet. Maybe he should feel like hunting her down, but all he felt was exhaustion.

Terry's follow up came in a gentle tone, the same voice he used on his daughters to get them to calm down. "That makes sense. We put an APB out for her, but she's off the grid. Thought something might've happened to her, too, before we realized that 'Vanessa' didn’t exist until a couple of years ago. You're sure?"

Jake shut his eyes and nodded, his words slurring together. "Means. She had all the access she needed. Somethin' in the honey, I don't..." He swallowed.

Terry picked up where his voice cut out. "It's called grayanotoxin. Comes from rhododendrons, if you can believe that. Boyle says that honey made from the nectar of rhododendrons carries the toxin, but the tea you brought in a few days ago was loaded with enough pure nectar to drop a moose." The sound of pen on paper. "Any idea about motive?"

"Hell no." A desperate laugh escaped his throat, which lit a fire in his aching chest. Then he was coughing, curled up on his side with one arm braced around his ribs and another dug into his hair for support. Somewhere in the room his heart monitor was beeping frantically, but he was too busy searching for where all the oxygen in the room had gone.

When he came back to himself, a warm hand was rubbing circles into his back. Gina pressed a tiny cup into his palm, helping him sit up enough to drink it. The cool water was mercy on his ragged throat. He got his breathing under control with visible effort, pressing a hand against his sternum. Looking down, he could seek a vast spectrum of bruises peeking out from under his collar. "Who’s been tap dancing on my chest?"

Weight shifted on the edge of his bed. Terry cleared his throat. "That'd be me. Um, your heart stopped in the bullpen. Santiago and I did CPR until the paramedics arrived."

Jake pressed his lips together, sighing. Great. Yet another reason for things to be endlessly terrible between him and Amy. "Please tell me that you did the rescue breathing."

"Nope."

This time he really did groan, resting his forehead in his palm. He could feel the gulf between himself and his teammates growing wider. He was a ship drifting off to sea, powerless to steer back to shore.

The more he thought about it, the angrier he became. Angry at Vanessa, angry at the squad for resenting his symptoms, angry at himself for being so astonishingly oblivious. "Everybody's thinking it; I'm jus’ gonna come right out and say it. I'm the worst detective ever." Jake announced to the irate unicorn on Gina's nap blanket.

Terry clasped his hands together, leaning forwards on his elbows. "Jake, I know how you must feel-"

"Bullshit. I don't know how I feel." Jake snapped, meeting Terry's eyes for the first time.

Terry's eyebrows were drawn together, his expression strained. He looked tired, his shirt wrinkled and stained with sweat.

Part of Jake was grateful for the effort, the time Terry had taken away from his girls and his four-month-old baby. Another part smoldered with anger. How dare the Sarge pity him; how dare he take the high ground when he was just as guilty of missing every sign along the way? When he'd lectured Jake to work harder, smarter, while his veins ran with poison?

The hospital room was quiet except for the rapid beeping of the heart monitor. Jake gripped the sheets, his mouth working as he fought for words. Finally, he looked away and let out a slow breath through his nose. "Anything else you needed?"

Terry cleared his throat. "Even if she was using an alias, she's bound to have told you some real things about herself. Is there anything you can give me that might give a clue to her real identity? Any contacts, anywhere she might have gone to lay low?"

Jake listed off a half dozen addresses - her store, her supposed aunt's place on Long Island, her best friend's bistro, and anywhere else he could think of.

The Sarge wrote them all down in his notebook, then stood abruptly. "I've gotta get this back to the station. See if we can follow up on any of these leads. I'll be in touch." He moved toward the doorway, then hesitated. "We're all really glad you're okay, Jake."

He pursed his lips. "Yeah, well, thanks for breaking my ribs and, you know, savin' my life an' all." A hint of his old humour snuck into his tone. His mouth flickered in an attempt at a grin he didn't feel.

"Anytime." Terry patted the doorway and slipped out.

Leaning back into the pillows, Jake let out a slow breath. His heart rate evened into a normal rhythm, his eyes sliding shut.

Never before had he wanted so badly to be unconscious. All his anxieties had woken and were clamouring for attention - worry about how he would ever repair his relationships with his friends, with Amy, if he even wanted to make that effort; if they would catch 'Vanessa' before she decided to come back and finish the job; how he was going to pay for this hospital stay (should he be signing himself out right now if he wanted to avoid bankruptcy?); if he should be a detective if he couldn't figure out the woman sleeping next to him was trying to murder him.

His mouth twisted into a grimace, his breath hitching.

"Wanna talk about it?" Gina said, her hand coming to rest on his wrist once more.

Jake moved his hand away to pull the sheets tight. He turned his face towards the wall and gave the most honest answer he could. "I'm tired, Gina."

* * *

Inside Vanessa's apartment, there was a drawer in her dresser with a false bottom. The drawer contained weeks of photographs of Jake. Jake at home, out shopping, exiting the precinct, and even a few from his time undercover.

"Of all the women in the world to be obsessed with me, it had to be the crazy homicidal one," Jake had moaned on hearing the case update from good old Captain Vulture.

The doctors wanted to keep him for another couple of days to make sure that prolonged exposure to the toxin hadn't done any permanent damage to his heart. His doctor confirmed what Jake had already suspected: grayanotoxin, or its less cool name 'mad honey,' caused low blood pressure, bradycardia, vomiting, excessive fatigue, and fainting. Extreme doses were known to cause seizures, coma and death. Her job in the outpost gave her access to imports and exports, and she'd had the tainted honey shipped in from Turkey for months.

As it turned out, while Vanessa was an excellent actress, she was a terrible poisoner. If she could have killed him at any time, why go through the charade of getting close to him?

That was the million dollar question.

* * *

The lead that Jake gave them bore fruit at Vanessa’s aunt’s house; a neighbour had seen her leaving in a powder blue Plymouth Duster. They’d tracked the car, brought her in and now it was time for answers.

Amy had negotiated her way into the role of interviewing officer by virtue of her rationality and ability to keep a cool head. There would be no eye-gouging today. She took a breath and pushed opened the door to Interrogation One.

Vanessa sat, balancing her chair on its back two legs, with pedicured toes kicked up on the table. Other than the dark dye in her hair giving way to light brown at her roots, she looked just as she had when Amy had first met her: perfectly at home and perfectly in control. Her head lifted up at the sound of the door opening, a sly smile spreading across her face. “Amy! How’s it goin’, girlfriend?”

“Vanessa. Or should I said, Valerie Giordano. I haven’t heard your name since Bianca’s trial - can’t say I’m glad to see you.” Amy said stiffly, aware of Terry’s presence on the other side of the glass.

“Aww, that’s a shame. Hey, I hear that I’m only being charged with attempted murder. Did Jake make it, then?” She let out a high, musical laugh. “Man, he’s like a cockroach.”

Amy’s eyebrows flew up. Ice curdled in the pit of her stomach and she pursed her lips. “So, no pretense? We’re just getting right down to the confession?”

Van- Valerie winked. “I don’t think I know what you’re talking about. If you want to talk specifics of who did what, when and how often, you’ll have to have a conversation with my lawyer. And that won’t be a conversation so much as you giving me exactly what I want - Vito Iannucci pays top dollar to protect his own.”

Amy snorted. “Some good that did your sister.”

Across the table, Valerie’s lips thinned slightly. “Vito happens to be under the -mistaken- impression that Bianca’s a rat. My sister’s a lot of things, but she’s no traitor. That trial was bogus. She never should’ve seen a day behind bars.”

“Twelve of her peers seem of disagree with that.” Amy said lightly, “Why are you so certain that you’re going to walk away from this?”

Valerie leaned in, her smile almost compassionate. “Oh, honey, do you really want this to go to trial?” She laughed. “Can you imagine what that will do to your precinct’s reputation? To Jake’s career?” She laid a hand on the table, her eye contact strong and compelling.  “Can’t we talk, just us girls? We never talk, Ames.”

“Don’t say that name like you know me,” Amy replied in a low voice, resting her knuckles against the table. Blood pounded in her ear and she cursed internally. Valerie was right - if this case went public, Jake’s career would be over. Without some pretty damning evidence, they’d be hard-pressed to make these charges stick.

“Au contraire, sister. I don’t know if you noticed this, but Jake is a talker. I’ve heard your name _all_ the time.”

“How about we try a hypothetical conversation?” Amy countered, avoiding the bait.

Valerie swept her tongue over her teeth. “Hypothetically, interesting. So long as none of this hearsay is admissible in court.”

“That’s up to you.” Taking a seat across from her partner’s attempted murderess, Amy folded her hands. “Detective Peralta was admitted to the hospital, suffering from rhododendron toxicity. Why would anyone use such a ridiculous poison when there are so many easier, cheaper, and quicker ways to kill someone?”

Valerie folded her hands under her chin. “Well, hypothetically speaking, if someone is being poisoned over a period of time and doesn’t die, either the poisoner is doing a really shitty job, or they aren’t looking to kill anyone.”

Pursing her lips, Amy tried to determine how full of it Valerie actually was. "I don't know about that. If I were going to poison someone, the payoff would have to be pretty big to make me rearrange my life to keep it up."

“Absolution isn’t enough for you? Clearing your family’s name, access to better lawyers - even a tasty bit of vengeance?”

Amy tilted her head to the side as though considering it, then shook her head. “No, I don’t buy it. That might make me agree to kill somebody, but not in such an elaborate, drawn out method. The risk is too high. Why wouldn’t I just give him a strychnine cocktail and be done with it?”

Valerie was quiet a minute. A slow smile spread over her face, like she was thinking of a private joke. “You’re jumping to conclusions, Detective Terrible Detective. Like I said, sometime you don’t want somebody dead right away. Sometimes, you want them to suffer.”

Her stomach curdled. Clenching a muscle in her jaw, Amy fought to keep her face impassive. “So, what, you seduced him?”

She started to laugh. “Oh, sweetie, you’re going to love this. Hypothetically speaking, ex-girlfriends are great sources of information.”

“Fun fact: Jake’s ex is under the impression that Jake has a thing for his partner. It’s easy to see that he has a type - all that someone would have to do is imitate the best qualities of both of you, and voila - Jake’s dream girl.”

“You know what would be even _more_ interesting? If Sophia seemed to be under the impression that Jake’s partner had a little thing for him, too. But of course we’re speaking hypothetically, because you actually didn’t give two shits when Jake started showing symptoms.” 

Amy shot to her feet, her chair scraping against the ground with a grating screech.

Valerie didn’t blink. “Please, hit me. I’ll scream police brutality so fast it’ll make your head spin.”

“We’re getting off the point here.” Amy ground out, taking a slow breath to gather herself. “Hypothetically, if someone wanted Jake dead, why take four months and a slow-acting poison to do it?”

Valerie shrugged. “Killing is easy. Destruction takes time.”

The hair on Amy’s arms prickled. She wanted to wipe that condescending smile from Valerie’s face, so she declared with confidence what she couldn't know for certain. “Some plan that turned out to be. Jake is going to make a full recovery.”

Instead, Valerie’s smug little grin widened. “Have you met Jake? He doesn’t care about his health. He cares about two things: his job and his friends. What better way to make him suffer than to destroy both of those?”

Amy’s stomach was in free fall. She opened her mouth for a witty rejoinder, but no words came out.

“So, he gets better. Big whoop. The damage is done, hon. Trust me, there’s no way that Jake will want anything to do with you now.”

* * *

Jake wasn’t looking forward to being released from the hospital. His walls were hung with memories, the good ones just as painful as the bad. He didn't want to spent the late hours of the night wondering where her lies stopped and the truth began.

Instead, he found himself sleeping in fitful dozes and pacing the sparsely decorated hospital room. He ran the diagnosis over and over in his head and tried to catalogue how long he’d been experiencing the symptoms. How long his team had written them off as his laziness. How long it had been since he’d felt comfortable inside the precinct walls.

He tried to imagine walking back into the bullpen and looking into the eyes of the people who had ignored and blamed him while he suffered.

Jake’s limbs moved on autopilot, carrying him over to his cell phone. He dialed Pembroke’s direct number. There was no answer, so he left a voicemail.

Informing him that he would be transferring out of the Nine Nine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In other news, when I first wrote this chapter, I'd just finished a CPR refresher. Apparently, the proper technique has been updated to C-A-B, not A-B-C, to get compressions going earlier. The more you know.
> 
> Okay friendos, this last chapter is the one that gave me eighteen months of writers block. I could really use your encouragement to make this happen!
> 
> Also, is AO3 inserting random line breaks into anyone else's work? I can't delete them and they're messing with the formatting. Driving me batty. xx;; halp.


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